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You are basically saying "intelligent design" did not happen because we evolved via natural selection which ignores the point that irreducible complexity indicates that we didn't evolve that way.

No, I'm saying that intelligent design did not happen because the things we would expect to see of 'design' in organisms - including humans - are not present. And as for irreducible complexity, all it boils down to is "this is so complex, I can't imagine how it could function with parts missing, thus it must have been designed." There's no effort to seriously consider any alternatives, such as incremental changes, or to look for flaws in the idea of irreducible complexity to begin with.

Quote from: DrTesla

I don't think Intelligent design means Flawless design or Perfect design. The human body is amazingly complex regardless of the errors that occur and man has never designed anything that comes close to the complexity of the human body so your point about technology seems bit of a red herring.

I brought up human technology because it is something that we know was designed. It doesn't matter how complex it might be - the fact of the matter is that even simple tools are superior to the human body for getting various tasks done. To demonstrate, try cutting paper with a nail versus a pair of scissors, or try pounding a nail in with your fist versus a hammer. The point is that we can already make tools which are better at getting various tasks done than the human body will ever be, despite the fact that they are far less complicated than the human body. Can you imagine how effective tools will be once they are within an order of magnitude of the complexity of the human body? It's a strong argument against humans (or any animals) having been designed.

Quote from: DrTesla

Moreover, it is the human brain that permits man to develop the technology that we use to extend life and improve quality of life. Even complex machines designed by humans can have flaws and they all break down after awhile. That does not mean they were not intelligently designed.

This is irrelevant, since entropy applies to everything. As you say, it doesn't prove whether something was intelligently designed or not. You have to look at other factors.

Quote from: DrTesla

Most mutations are a disadvantage or neutral, it would seem. You kind of acknowledge this when you said intelligent design isn't intelligent, meaning flaws exist in people.

No, I said that there are no signs of intelligent design in organisms. Do not put words in my mouth. You might believe in intelligent design of organisms, but you have not proved it actually happens, so you have no business acting as if it's a given that it did.

Quote from: DrTesla

I think you are not understanding what irreducible complexity means. It means a functional complex structure cannot be created in a piecemeal additive way. The parts have to come together at once and work together.

It's because I understand what irreducible complexity means that I consider it so much rubbish. It's an argument from incredulity, based on the unexamined belief that things that are sufficiently complex cannot work except in their current form.

Quote from: DrTesla

It also seems to defy the laws of probality that mutations are going to result in a beneficial trait like being able to see at night and then another benefial trait like color differntiaion and so on, and somehow all these traits work together to give us vision as we know it. I don't think it is probable that one beneficial trait could have a mutation to lead to another beneficial trait as they have nothing to with each other....one could not serve as the basis for the other because of structural differences.

I seriously doubt you understand probability even as well as you do evolution (and you've already admitted that you have, at best, a high school freshman understanding of evolutionary theory). First off, nobody (except those trying to claim that evolution could not have happened) is saying that you had to have a chain dozens or hundreds of beneficial mutations all at the same time in order for something like the eye to work. The fact of the matter is that traits that lead to an evolutionary advantage (or that have no effect) tend to be conserved, while traits that lead to a serious enough disadvantage tend to eradicate themselves from the gene pool.

You might review the [wiki]law of large numbers[/wiki] sometime. It illustrates this very well. Just as a gambler earns money over time even though a sizable number of people win money from it (because a far greater number lose money), so too would evolution tend to provide for a gradual, incremental improvement in a species even though you have the occasional mutation which either kills its carrier or confers enough of a disadvantage that the organism can't compete well with others of its species.

Quote from: DrTesla

You are basically arguing that lifeforms must get more complex and efficient over time but it seems like natural selection would be eliminating the negative traits produced by mutations that impact survival, and thus there would be no real change over time.

Incorrect. Evolution isn't a [wiki]zero-sum[/wiki]. If you have a trait that gets conserved, and another trait that causes its carriers to get wiped out, you don't end up back at the baseline, because the second trait excises itself from the gene pool. So you end up having a gradual series of changes that tend to improve the baseline over time.

Quote from: DrTesla

If a lifeform can survive without the ability to see color, is a mutation leading to the ability to see color really going to be favored by natural selection? I would think the lifeform that is color blind could survive at least long enough to reproduce and pass its color blind gene on. Aren't dogs to this day color blind? Color blindness in humans is really an genetic error that appears in something more complex. Evolution seems to say color blindness in humans is realy just a primitive form of our vision, not a genetic error that leads to a reduced form of vision. Does this make sense? It is hard to explain this.

Something can be disadvantageous without being seriously so. Color-blindness is only disadvantageous in certain situations, for example, so people with color-blindness tend to survive and reproduce. Not only that, but there are things which seem disadvantageous, but confer an evolutionary advantage, such as [wiki]sickle-cell anemia[/wiki]. People with sickle-cell anemia tend to die fairly young; the average life expectancy for people with it was in their 40s as little as 20 years ago. However, it confers a strong resistance to the malaria parasite, which is pretty lethal - hundreds of thousands of deaths a year, mostly concentrated in young children who have no chance to reproduce. In other words, even though sickle-cell anemia shortens someone's lifespan, it lets them live long enough to reproduce and pass down the gene, whereas malaria tends to kill off people before they can reproduce.

Quote from: DrTesla

Ok, I understand the point that you have here but at the same time I don't think you can argue that irreducible complexity on this plant isn't a problem for the evolution theory simply because of the "hypocrisy" so to speak in relation to how the "creator" came to be. The "creator" itself could be some kind of supernatural thing that can not be explained by the laws of nature on this planet so I do think we have to isolate the question of how we originated and the question of how a "creator" came to be. I am also not saying that it is IMPOSSIBLE that a type of evolution occurred but I don't think it was the result of random mutations and natural selection. I think this is actually the postion of many of the intelligent design people at the Discovery Institute like that Behe guy who wrote the book about it back in 96 or so.

This is special pleading - you are basically demanding that your belief be given special treatment despite the fact that you can't really support it. If you can't prove that a creator or designer exists, then there's no reason to assume it does and thus no reason to consider intelligent design as being anything but an unsupported belief which can't be backed up by evidence. Do you understand? If there were a creator or designer, whatever, we would see real evidence of it. You would not have to give it supernatural attributes to explain the lack of evidence.

Quote from: DrTesla

C'mon man, do you really think that I think a dog evolved into a cat, etc? I don't think any cross species evolution of any kind has been proven by scientists and I am not talking about big leaps from one species to a completely different species. It seems like they would have numerous of examples of cross species evolution given they assert evolution has been proven and not just a theory. Can you list these examples if they exist?

It's been proven well enough, considering that the degree of DNA similarity between organisms closely corresponds to where they lie within the taxonomy hierarchy. That is to say, DNA between two closely-related species is much more similar than DNA between two relatively distant species. It's exactly as it should be for organisms to have evolved from common ancestors, in other words.

Quote from: DrTesla

Don't we always approach subjects from ignorance and then become less ignorant as we learn stuff? You are basically just saying you are right and my questions are dumb even though they aren't dumb.

The difference is that most people who are ignorant of a subject don't attempt to claim that their existing knowledge disproves something else (especially if they don't understand the latter). Your attitude, much like other people who buy into intelligent design, is that ID must be correct because it makes sense to you, even though you don't understand evolution very well at all. In other words, it isn't the fact that you're ignorant of evolutionary theory, it's the fact that you present something like ID as being more correct than evolution despite your lack of understanding of the latter.

Quote from: DrTesla

They are logical and if they aren't, you need to show me how they are not logical. I am not preaching on here and I can be wrong.

It's good that you can admit that. The problem is that your questions are based on the fact that you only really know about ID and not evolution, so you are presenting things that have been rebutted over and over again.

Quote from: DrTesla

I have no dog in the debate...I just find the IC theory to be compelling and a big blow to the evolution theory.

Except, as you've said, you don't really understand evolution well enough to have any real basis for that statement. The problem with ID is that it's intentionally designed to seem credible to people, like you, who aren't particularly knowledgeable about evolution. It's always easier to pass along something like ID, which purports to give an easy answer to complicated questions, than to actually learn the more complicated answers that make less assumptions.

Quote from: DrTesla

I think most people want to know the truth whatever it is so let us not question that in each other. My argument does essentially boil down to what you cited there and I think it is logical and you have not proven that isn't a logical argument, as far as I can see.

With all due respect, logic is often only a way to make a mistake with confidence. You shouldn't be worried about whether a question is logical, you should be worried about making sure you know enough about the subject to be able to accurately evaluate the questions you're trying to ask.

Quote from: DrTesla

I think it is amazing that men and women develop these private parts that are compatible with each other and by them getting together results in a baby. To think this evolved as the result of random mutations seems to defy the laws of probability and logic itself. It does seem like it has to be the objective of something but again, we don't know everything and maybe there are supernatural processes that science can't explain. I think we all assume science can explain everything but that isn't something we can prove. This is kind of confusing.

Except neither probability nor logic really mean anything in this debate. Talking about the probability of something that's already happened is meaningless, because it became 100% as soon as it happened - and more to the point, the probability of anything happening is going to be fairly low until it actually does happen. And trying to use logic to disprove something that exists is even more meaningless, because reality always trumps logic.

Honestly, sexual reproduction probably developed from a process similar to the one shown by William - instead of two organisms joining together to exchange genetic material, they join together to give their offspring differentiated genetic material. And then it just progresses from there.

Quote from: DrTesla

This seems like circular logic. There is no advantage to reproduction as far as a lifeform adapting to its environment. Morever it doesn't seem probable that a man private parts just developed thru random mutations, as I already discussed. Again even a man's or woman's sexual organs are complex and one component of it would be useless.

And what makes you think that human beings just spontaneously developed penises and vaginas? This is the flaw in your thinking - you're thinking of human beings existing without reproductive equipment and then spontaneously developing it so they can continue the species. Basically, you're thinking of humans as having been created and then spontaneously developing reproductive equipment through mutations, which is patently ridiculous. The truth of the matter is that this kind of reproductive equipment has been around for a very, very long time, back to dinosaurs and even before.

I'll honestly admit I don't know exactly when or how sexual differentiation happened, but how it probably started is something really basic, like those two bacteria linking together to share genetic material, except that one, or possibly both of them budded, putting the modified DNA into its daughter organism rather than simply incorporating it into itself. And then it progressed from there. So by the time life got to multi-celled organisms that developed distinct organs for different tasks (such as the heart and lungs), reproductive equipment was already present, and modified itself based on the DNA of the organism (in human parlance, XX means you get ovaries, XY means you get testes, and everything else develops from there)

Quote from: DrTesla

Think about this, the ability to reproduce has to be present in the very first lifeform on this planet otherwise it would have gone extinct OR that first lifeform had to develop the ability to reproduce during its own lifetime (which probably wasn't very long) without it having a genetic basis which seems impossible. That life itself could occur sponteanously seems like a miracle in itself but to think reproduction was possible in the first lifeform on earth seems like a double miracle.

Of course it was present. But it was asexual reproduction - the ability to bud and create a clone of itself. Indeed, the first life on Earth was probably so simple that it was just a matter of 'infecting' organic matter with RNA-like chemical instructions that created a replica of itself[1]

Quote from: DrTesla

This seems like circular logic too. You are missing my point about reproduction has nothing to do with the original lifeform being able to survive in a given environment.

No, I'm not. Without reproduction, there would have been no way for a lifeform to persist beyond its own lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised to find that lots of these basic lifeforms evolved, but only one of them "figured out" how to reproduce. It's that one that would have been the ultimate ancestor of all life on Earth.

Quote from: DrTesla

BUt if we just stipulate that somehow the reproduction is tied to an organisms own survival in its environment and some mutation occured that resulted in the ability to reproduce (what was the original trait that reproduction could have evolved from, this goes back to my other point about most traits don't have a basis trait it could evolve from), asexual reproduction was easier and took less energy and time and produced more offspring so it seems it seems improable that sexual reproduction would have occurred even though it has advantages that you covered. I don't see how asexual reproduction could have served as a basis for for sexual reproduction as they could not be more different, and again, what served as the basis for asexual reproduction.

Asexual reproduction was easier, true. But it just resulted in clones of the original organism, which had the same vulnerabilities as the original, which was an evolutionary disadvantage. That's why single-celled lifeforms shared genetic material with each other (but even then, they were not that much different). It is not that much of a leap to go from "two bacteria share genetic information and later bud to create offspring with the revised genes" to "two bacteria share genetic information and bud it off into an offspring of both".